I apologise that you took orders of magnitude literally. I'll settle for an entire order of magnitude really. I think it's _way_ more than 35%, though.

> It looks like very efficient fridges today use about 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).

Where did you get that number from? Here's [0] a $220 fridge that advertises at 90 kWh. I found another that claims 61 kWh, but it's $1800 so I left it. 20 years ago is a very specific timeframe, if you go back 25 years you're also likely talking about removing a bunch of horriffic CFC's which were widespread at the time. I'm finding it hard to find numbers for that time frame though, the only ones I can find are early 90's claims of 1700+kWh/year.

But yes, I concede, we have not had a 100x improvement in energy efficiency in 20 years. The entire rest of my post stands, and I think we've seen a 10x improvement in efficiency. At today's electricity price in the UK, the savings from a 550 kWh fridge to the one I linked above would pay for the fridge in a little over a year. Said fridge is under guarantee for 2 years in the EU/UK, so it's a _guaranteed_ cost saving over that time period.

[0] https://ao.com/product/rl170d4bwe-hisense-fridge-white-80358...